A Blogging Experiment

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About Nils

By day, Nils works as a project manager in the IT industry. By night, he explores strange new worlds, protects the downtrodden, and practices conquering the world. To follow his exploits you can subscribe to his YouTube channel, Have Joystick, Will Travel and follow him on Twitter.

My channel grew by 41 subscribers (to 178) and had a new personal best in views (5440). Total viewtime was even better, at 31987 minutes it was twice as much as my previous best (November, 14392).

This was the direct result of three factors:

I ran two adverts on Reddit. This gave me a small boost to my EU4 series.

I posted about my Myst series, again on Reddit, which a lot of new viewers then binge-watched

I started streaming Elite: Dangerous for the Distant Worlds expedition, which brough a lot of viewers (for my standards)

This illustrates two things. One, self-promotion is a good idea if done respectfully. Two, the value of doing the right game at the right moment.

Streaming

I finally started streaming on Twitch in earnest. Currently, I focus exclusively on Elite: Dangerous (that Distant Worlds Expedition takes up a lot of time). This isn’t a bad thing, however, as there is not a great amount of competition. I get 6-8 viewers pretty much constantly; even more significantly there is usually someone who actually chats. My highest viewer peak was 11, and I made it to 15 followers at the end of January.

So, overall, I am quite happy with how my Twitch career started.

I do upload all my Twitch stream footage to YouTube, where I have a sort of secondary audience. Not many views, but some people seem to run the videos while they play or work, resulting in a disproportionate high viewtime. It’s really all just good for my channel so far.

Statistics

YouTube Videos: 42

Twitch Streams: 6

YouTube Subscribers: +41 = 178

Twitch Followers: +10 = 15

YouTube Video Views: 5440

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December was another good month. It set new records – albeit at small margins – on both subscribers (+13) and views (+12 versus October). Total view time was about 8.5% lower than in November, but it’s still a decent result.

I did publish 34 videos on YouTube; one of them being the archived footage from my frist Twitch stream ever. That’s right; I started streaming, although the first one was for testing purposes. A friend watched (the only person, I believe) and I did make some adjustments so future streams will be smoother.

Other than that, I think it is noteworthy that I paid for two ads – to run on Reddit in early January – and signed for for the Elite Dangerous “Distant Worlds Expedition”, a community event that I intend to cover with blog posts and videos. Not only should it be fun, and make me some (in-game) money; I hope that it will also involve me in the community and net me a few viewers, of course. I will take the self-marketing more seriously in 2016, as I intend to grow my channel; and this was me getting into that a little early.

One sad thing to note is that I did catch a nasty cold at the end of the month, and pretty much lost my voice. This will affect me in January. Luckily I did have some pre-recorded footage; I should perhaps record a week’s worth of videos of some classic game so I have material to upload at any point to cover for a similar problem.

Over all I am quite happy with December, and with the year as a whole. Let’s make 2016 an even better year.

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Since today is the 1st of January, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back at 2015 – and set some goals for this year.

First of all, let’s look at my 2015 goals.

Websites: I was aiming at 7500 page views/month, but I gave up maintaining my blogs almost entirely. Consequently, I did not get even close.

YouTube: Goal was 150 subscribers, and as the year ended, I had 134 (I peaked at 135 for a day). Thus, I fell short by about 15%. It’s a bit disappointing, but considering the channel grew by 19 subscribers in the entire year of 2014 I am quite happy.

Videos: One year ago I decided I would take my channel more serious, and upload one video every week without exceptions. I am very happy to report that I not only met that goal, but vastly exceeded it – First I switched to several videos a week, and then to a daily schedule. All said and done, I uploaded 362 videos over the year.

So what are some conclusions?

I think the daily schedule is working really well for me. Since I started uploading daily, I doubled my monthly views. I also gained twice as many subscribers in the second half of the year as I did in the first.

Choice of games matters as well, no doubt. Where I was very random before mid-year, I now have a consistent EU4 schedule.

So what about 2016?

I’d like to get to 200 subscribers. I’ve chosen this target number more conservatively this year – better to overachieve if that’s possible.

I will stay with a daily release schedule: EU4 every day at 9pm, with other games in the optional 3pm slot as I produce the videos.

I will actively promote my channel. I am not sure how I can measure this, but I will keep a log of what I do.

Last but not least I will start streaming, ideally on a weekly basis.

What about the websites?

I’ll pretty much ignore them. The YouTube channel is what I enjoy.

That said, I will update the website(s) for my channel; I will maintain my geek blog (as I only post whenever I solve a technical problem anyway), and I will also post about other relevant things – i.e. the websites aren’t dead, they are just on a “minimum effort” level.

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November was a good month. First and foremost, I kept with my daily schedule – releasing, in fact, 43 videos over the course of the month. While views were slightly down, at just under 3000 views, this was just an artifact of November having one fewer day than October. In reality, the number of views grew by 0.47%. At the same time, I had a record month regarding total viewed time; clocking in at 14392 minutes.

Most importantly, I got 12 new subscribers. A new record.

Revenue was pretty good as well – a total of 9 Euro between my blogs and YouTube channel.

I should mention that this is all despite starting a new job in November.

Other than sheer numbers, I did not make a whole lot of progress. I made preparations for starting to stream at some point – bought a second screen, completed my OBS configuration, and set up TeeBoard. I believe that streaming is a good way to reach my intended audience, but I have not yet gotten around to it (nor mustered the courage).

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I completely forgot to post my monthly update in September, so I will combine September and October. Ooops.

Both months saw healthy revenue (for my low standards). September clocked in at 5.7 Eur, and October at 6.23 Eur. Pageviews of my blogs increased by 300 each; to ~6200 in September and then to ~6500 in October.

Content-wise, I have all but given up on my blogs, concentrating what I truly enjoy: My YouTube channel. Exceptions being the blog about solutions to IT problems, as that has always been on a very slow burn, and the companion blog to said channel.

In a way I was quite happy when I realized this; spreading myself too thin – overextending, if you will – has always been a problem of mine. I realized that I need to concentrate on one or at most two things and do them well instead of doing many things at once which then each see no progress.

And as a consequence, this blog (From the Office to the Beach) will likely focus more and more on the video side of things as well.

So, let’s look at the content. I produced and published 43 videos in September, and a whopping 51 in October. This is a far cry from my “one a week minimum” goal for this year. My choices – Europa Universalis and The Long Dark are relatively popular; especially The Long Dark gets good actual retention, which is something to emphasise over views, of course.

My channel did do well for itself, too; I had 2770 views in September and 3059 in October – my first ever month over 3000, and without any of the few minor viral videos I had, too. I gained 11 subscribers in September and 5 in October, bringing my current total to 112. I still won’t meet my lower end goal for 2015 as it currently stands, but at least I did break the 100 Subscribers milestone.

I do believe that just getting those numbers higher – views and subscribers – has to be my short-term goal, as I firmly believe in herd mentality. Or in other words, the way to become popular is to be popular. It’s a feedback loop, and bootstrapping it is the difficult part.

Videos: 43 (September), 51 (October)

Subscribers: +11 (September), +5 (October) = 112

Views: 2770 in September, 3059 in October

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August saw the worst revenue in a long, long time. No particular reasons for that; the randomness of it all just wasn’t on my side. While the estimated YouTube revenue is quite alright at €1.01, AdSense netted a mere €1.31.

For content, I have mostly given up on my blogs and concentrated on my YouTube channel – that’s what I enjoy doing. I published a total of 43 videos – quite a lot higher than my intended 1/week. Significantly, my channel’s subscriber number increased from 87 to 95 (and, in a slight spoiler, increased to over 100 in early September).

Of course, I posted about each of the 43 videos once. Beyond that, I posted only twice on other subjects. My blogs had a decent number of views – 5919, up 600 from the previous month.

With my current numbers, there is no way to still meet the year’s goals. This is okay, they were very optimistic. As I look into the future, however, I do wonder what I should do about my content creation endeavors. As mentioned, the YouTube channel is what I enjoy. I do get good feedback on my videos; and the channel is growing, albeit slowly. It’s just that there is absolutely no way that it will become even self-sufficient in the near future, and I wonder if I am even cut to be a content creator.

Unfortunately, my YouTube channel ended the month losing a total of two subscribers; a bit of a setback. I will very likely not meet my subscriber targets for the year, and I seriously need to work on promoting the channel. That said, I did start a more specialized YouTube channel, to see if focusing on one game will yield better results. It’s admittedly a little risky, as this divides my focus among two channels, but we’ll see.

On the bright side, blog views are back to roughly May’s level, at 5315 views (+300 compared to June). Revenue has also recovered, with an estimated 5.35 Euro from blogs and 0.93 Euro from YouTube.

I guess I can still describe my efforts as “treading water”, even if there is a constant, if very small, increase in my average revenue. Besides self-promotion, which I still don’t do at all, I am pondering creating content that might appeal a little more to the broad masses.

Estimated Revenue: 6.2 Euro

Total Pageviews: 5315 (+300)

New Posts: 37

New Videos: 23

YouTube subscribers: 87 (+2 for the secondary channel)

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More real life problems in June, but on the plus side it helped me to admit to myself that, yes, creating content is what I really do want to do with my life. Not that I have any illusions about the feasibility of that.

While my real life has been exciting for all the wrong reasons, the publishing front has been fairly uneventful. I feel like I did not create much content; but fortunately I keep a log and it’s really not that bad (17 posts and 17 videos). I’ve also done a little work on branding: I added a watermark to my videos, which YouTube uses as a subscribe button as well, and I created new channel art.

It is noteworthy that my YouTube revenue is roughly 75% lower in June than it has been for the last six months. I don’t know what caused this drop – it could just be the summer slump – but it illustrates quite well that just having one source of income could be a problem, and I will do well to keep trying to diversify as I work on this.

On the bright side, my subscriber count climbed from 84 to 89 (it was at 90 for a week before dropping down one just hours before the end of the month). I still don’t know if these are “real” subscribers, or just bots (I get no spam, though) but they help anyway. I think a big part of YouTube is herd mentality: Just like an empty restaurant is less likely to get customers than one that is crowded, I think people are more likely to subscribe and actually follow a channel that is already popular. I am not saying that this is why I am not rich and famous, obviously.

Estimated Revenue:

Total Pageviews: 5070 (-200)

New Posts: 17

New Videos: 17

YouTube subscribers: 89

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Oh, May. A difficult month due to events and actions unrelated to my publishing aspirations. I nevertheless made 5.5 Euro via Blogs and YouTube. The total isn’t stellar but I’ve at least exceeded last year’s May, and as of end of May I am about 12 Euro – or about 60% – ahead on last year.

After my wave of YouTube videos and the slight burnout in late April/early May, I’ve focused a little more on blogging this month, hosting a Blog Carnival on my Worldbuilding site. Unlike previous such events, it has not resulted in “big” a peak of views. Either my topic was chosen poorly or the dissolution of the community that organized it has caused a negative impact – I think it’s mostly the later. Nevertheless, at least I had a slightly plus in total – and the blog was really due to some updates.

Estimated Revenue: 5.50 Eur.

Total Pageviews: 5228. +300 from last month.

New Posts: 22

New Videos: 6

YouTube Subscribers: 84

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April started out well, but I had a little bit of a motivational problem half-way into the month. Luckily I had plenty of video content queued up, so I did not break my “new year’s resolution” of publishing a video a week. The month ended with a slight plus on access views, another slight increase in YouTube subs to 81, and a decent – for my level – revenue of 6.8 Euro.

The “motivation crisis” was triggered, oddly enough, by YouTube’s introduction of “subscriber vs non-subscriber” statistics. Suddenly, I am able to tell that my subscribers hardly watch any of my content. From discussions on Reddit, it seems that I am not doing worse than other small channels, but until that point I had worked on the assumption that subscribers subscribe because they like your content.

The harsh reality, though, is that very few people actually care.

The good news is that, as I write this, I am over the hump. I will want to make some adjustments, but the desire to go on with content creation is back.